[Here’s a] little bit about our philosophy. We want to buy the best green coffee, and by buying the best green coffee, we can turn around and roast some of the best coffees in the world and actually take the time to develop [the flavor]. These are eight pound roasters, but most roasters are 25 to 50 kilogram roasters, these here are tiny. These are not something you're going to see any of my competition use. Another big reason why I wanted to use these [smaller] roasters [is because] they're electric.

Roasting in the South side of Chicago, I got to learn about column pressure and how outdated the city’s gas lines are. In the winter when everyone has their heat on there's no [gas] pressure, but in the summer, the pressure is out the roof. Having controlled variables was very important throughout the seasons in a city that has very dramatic seasons.

I just want to do [roasting in a different way]. We could [produce the same quality coffee] on different machines, but then we'd be just like the rest of the 99% of the 4% [of coffee producers] that are doing what we're doing in this country. We're more of a philosophy driven company than a scientific driven company, [there’s] a lot of feeling.

What they're doing today is [called] production cupping. They're tasting all of the coffees that we [distribute] to the city, so we can keep control of what [type of coffee is] going out and so we can actually know how our products are supposed to taste. This is another machine that we just installed last year. This is a modified control panel where we can actually graph trends and do some [modifications] as far as airflow and gas, everything is digitally controlled. This way we can actually play with stretching caramelization, trying to shorten the roast or lengthen the roast depending on the coffee. Here's your air tube, there's your gas tube. You're basically going to push air through this tube up and out. Depending on how strong we want the actual air flow we can go 100% air, we can go 40% air, [it all depends] on what [we want to do] with which coffee.

I have a gas powered drum roaster, two electric powered fluid bed roasters, and a gastro and fluid bed roaster. [Using a variety of roasters, we can find] different ways of caramelization using different heating mechanisms and different technologies. [We gather] all this information and can learn from it. [I believe] why make it easy if you can make it hard and fun.